Iona talks to Aisling Finn at Alt-Fi about everything you wanted to know about crypto – but were afraid to ask

Crypto, particularly Bitcoin, has been the topic on everyone’s minds lately.

Following the rise and fall of the ‘Reddit Stocks’ attention has turned to cryptocurrency.

Now, crypto has been around for over a decade so it’s not exactly the new kid on the block, however, it is currently reaching levels that few people predicted it would back in its early days.

Given just how popular cryptocurrency is at the moment, we here at AltFi thought that it might be worth having a dig around to ask all the difficult questions that you may be afraid to ask.

What actually is cryptocurrency?

How can something that isn’t backed by a central bank or gold and is as intangible as cryptocurrency hold any value I hear you ask?

Well, David Stevenson, a strategic advisor for AltFi and author of the Adventurous Investor column in the Financial Times gave us the run-through.

“Cryptocurrencies are designed to create an alternative to fiat money or money created by a Central Bank,” Stevenson told AltFi, “Digital currencies are an attempt in a sense to go back to the gold standard in many respects.”

Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency, was founded in 2009 by a mysterious figure (or figures) dubbed Satoshi Nakamoto and is based on cryptography, or the method of protecting information through the use of codes.

Iona Bain, investment author and founder of the Young Money Blog, told AltFi: “After the [2008] financial crash with the central bank’s printing more money to buy assets in quantitative easing. We saw that there was this desire for maybe an alternative system.”

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